


Art Lesson

by copperbadge



Category: Real Person Fiction
Genre: M/M, body art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-16 11:03:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both artists, in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Art Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Beta thanks to Foxy, Spider, Nick, Mandr, Gypsy, Dove, Anya, C, and Jenny. Seriously, a village.

Scott is an architect. Architects are like artists with maths.

John gets this. He's an artist with his body. Scott draws things that a couple of months later actually _exist_. Usually, of course, he draws them with rulers or computers -- maths! -- but Scott can draw pretty much anything, even freehand, and he's really good at it. Sometimes on weeks they're apart John will get a thick letter in the mail and it'll be a folded piece of cold-press paper with thick tooth, covered in conte or pencil and smelling faintly of fixative: a drawing of wherever-Scott-is or one of the dogs or something pornographic, if Scott's in a _mood._

Scott's definitely in some kind of mood at the moment, despite them having a whole week together at the house in Cardiff, but John sometimes likes to needle him a little.

"Really, though, what do you think, would it look good?" he asks loudly, standing shirtless in front of the bedroom mirror.

"I don't care," Scott yells back from his workroom.

"I'd like a tiger," John announces, flexing his right arm, curling it around to study his bicep. He spreads both arms, studying his chest. "Or a dragon, one of those big fucking Ed Hardy ones."

"You should get the BBC logo stamped on your arse," Scott calls.

"Are ideograms still in?" John asks, running a hand down his hip. He could get "Immortal" in kanji, that'd be cool.

"Ideograms are appropriative and were never in," Scott sounds irritated, but he's standing at the workroom door now rather than pointedly ignoring John for his drafting table. "God, is this your mid-life crisis? Can't you just buy another car?"

"Wings," John says, turning around and looking over his shoulder at his back in the mirror. "On my shoulderblades. Yeah?"

"You are such a princess."

John gives him a faux-pout lip. Scott shakes his head.

"I can't anyway," John muses, a little regretfully. They both know it; he shapes his body for public purchase, a hundred thousand viewers at a time, and any permanent changes had better be for that, not for personal vanity. Hair dye to cover the white, a little Botox around the eyes, time at the gym when he can spare it, waxing and plucking and tanning. Makeup could cover a tattoo if they had to, but he'd prefer nobody had to. Plus it'd hurt, and pain for the non-essentials isn't something John's into.

Scott slides an arm around his waist and turns him, studying them both in the mirror, Scott's neat yellow polo and John's bare skin.

"I should have got one when I was twenty and didn't know any better," John says ruefully. "Would you have cared?"

"Nuh," Scott says into his shoulder.

"Would you have thought I was cooler?"

"I thought you were cool anyway," Scott tells him. "Clearly love is blind."

"Thanks," John drawls, tipping his chin up and away from Scott a little -- were tattoos on collarbones cool? They probably hurt a lot.

"What brought this on?" Scott asks.

"Gavin's putting me up for a part with tattoos," John says. "They do them with latex, apparently, big stickers they stick on your skin."

"Sounds like the best of both worlds. Walk on the wild side for a week, peel them off at the end of the day," Scott shrugs against his body. "Could be fun."

"Hm. Maybe."

Scott lets him go, smacking him on the arse, and walks back into his workroom. John falls backwards onto the bed, listening to him rattle pens in a cup, apparently looking for something. CJ's claws click on the floor, skittering into the workroom to investigate, and Scott shoos him out again. John lifts his head.

Scott, in the doorway, holds up his prize -- a handful of thick pens, markers he uses for colouring renderings for his clients. Both John and his nieces are banned from playing with them, because they are Serious Markers for Serious Art (they have Crayolas for when the girls visit). John props himself on his elbows, lifting an eyebrow.

"Stay there," Scott says, and tosses them in a shower of gem colours onto the bedspread. Fine tip, chisel tip, thick tip, brush tip. John picks up one of them -- "Brick Red" -- and toys with it.

Scott disappears again and returns with a cup of water and a flannel. Now John is _really_ curious, but he stays where he is, tapping Brick Red against his lips. He's tempted to uncap it and give himself a makeup job just to piss Scott off, but who knows how long the ink would stay on his skin. While it'd be _hilarious_ to go auditioning with perma-Brick Red lips, it probably wouldn't be good for him professionally.

Scott gets a knee on the bed, cautious of spilling the water, and swings the other one over John's hips, grinning. John grins back as Scott dabs the flannel in the water and smooths it over his ches _OH ICEWATER_.

"Cold!" he protests. It's not fair play, using icewater, but Scott merely continues swabbing the water on his chest. After a minute, he doubles the flannel over and dries it away. 

Scott leans back and studies him, impersonally, head slightly tilted. It's a stare usually reserved for walls he intends to knock down, or carpet he's going to pull up. (Not strictly in his line, at least not as architect, but Scott likes getting hands-on when it's his own house involved.)

He takes the pen out of John's hands, clenches the cap between his teeth while he pushes John's arms out to the sides, gives him a look that says _stay_ , and then tugs the pen out of the cap and twirls it across his index finger to grip it right-side-down in his hand. John loves when he does that, sitting at the breakfast table with Sudoku or working on something while they watch TV, idle twirl-twirl-twirl across his finger.

The first touch of pen-tip (chisel) to skin (pectoral) is as cold as the water was, surprisingly wet; Scott rests his elbow across John's left collarbone, leaning forward to sketch a little swirl just above his nipple. John tries not to breathe too deeply. Scott considers it, head tilting the other way, and then finds another marker: "Late Sunset". John can't tell what it looks like on his skin, but the tip looked orange for the brief flash of it he got before Scott twisted little wet dots of it into his chest and his head tipped back of its own volition. He swallows, closes his eyes, and keeps trying not to breathe too deeply. Which is increasingly difficult as Scott blurs red and orange together, right around his nipple.

"I hope those are non-toxic," he manages.

"They are," Scott says absently, without stopping. He's drawing out long streaks across his chest now, down the line of his sternum towards his belly. John thinks maybe he heard another pen being uncapped. "This is going to ruin them, by the way."

"I'll buy you new," John promises fervently. The damp, curving streaks warm as they dry, just in time for Scott to add more fresh cool ink. John tries to track what Scott could be drawing -- hot-rod style flames? Some kind of devil? -- but the thick wet stroke-stroke on his skin is distracting. Every so often he can hear Scott changing pens, and then a different pattern begins, little sharp dots or short brisk streaks.

With the first brush across his abdomen, he can't help it; he twitches and laughs, muscles tensing and pulling his skin. Scott swears as the pen apparently goes astray, and a second later there's a damp thumb rubbing the offending mark off, spit dissolving the ink before it can dry. He gets a pinched nipple for his efforts, which is hardly going to _discourage_ him, except Scott digs his thumbnail in a little and the sharpness is a warning.

"M'ticklish," he mumbles, feeling sleepy and a little giddy.

"Yes, I know." Scott sounds exasperated. He tries again, more tentatively, and John holds as still as he knows how. His chest feels warm where the ink has dried, though it can't possibly be melting into him like it feels it is, sweeping tendrils of heat through his ribcage while Scott continues cool and wet on his stomach.

Very, very carefully, he lifts one hand and finds Scott's shoulder, feels his arm flex, slides his fingers up over his neck. He cups his thumb along the ridge of Scott's ear and strokes his hair, fingertips rubbing familiar circles in his scalp. It's much the same as he does during a blowjob, and it's obviously not lost on Scott, who takes the opportunity to snort with amusement and slide his hips down, thighs riding the waistband of John's denims. The weight of him is tantalising.

The ink feels slick on the more sensitive skin of his stomach, almost as though it were painted on instead of sketched. He can feel Scott going over parts he's already covered, blending, the rub of his thumb more frequent now as he grinds one colour into another. When Scott sets out to do a thing he does it properly.

He scoots again, in order to continue some fiddly work on the lower right, almost into the obliques, and every movement now rubs their hips together. He's not hard, too engrossed in the work, but John is very hard and the slight shift-bump-shift makes his free hand clench in the sheets, his thighs tense with obedient effort not to move as Scott works. He tightens his fingers in Scott's hair and only gets a laugh for his efforts.

Scott sits up, pulls back, stops shifting against him, and gently disentangles John's hand from his hair. John opens his eyes and everything's bright and he wants to pull Scott down for a kiss, but Scott puts a hand on his chest, high up by his throat, and shakes his head.

When John settles again he moves, capping half a dozen pens, tossing them to the floor as he goes. He rubs his hands, the smears of ink there already too dry to be wiped away, and picks up a plain black permanent marker, bending again to John's skin.

"Detail work," John groans.

"God is in the details," Scott says, but he's bent so close his breath puffs against John's chest. A few lines there, many more over his stomach and down almost to his waist, quick short twists on his right. And then, more slowly, some sort of detail work on his left, which has been mostly untouched until now.

When he's done, he blows on it to dry it, and John shivers. There's a warning huff from Scott above him.

The bed creaks a little as Scott climbs off -- disappointing, but John is nothing if not determined in pursuit, and one way or another this will end in sex. Except Scott is tugging him off the bed as well, pens skittering around as their feet kick them all over. He feels sensitised, as if he's just woken up, and when he sees his face in the mirror his pupils are huge.

He almost forgets that Scott was working towards a result, an actual drawing, but he jerks his gaze down from his face and finds the whole of his torso covered in vivid red-orange and black, tinges of green and blue here and there, swirls of blended purple for shading. His breath catches.

Splayed over his skin, its tail curled around his right nipple, its wings spreading left and four clawed legs akimbo over his stomach is a dragon -- the Welsh dragon, though not in its proper pose. Even with its mouth gaping ferociously just above his right hip, it's unmistakable: deep burnished red, eyes flashing under a folded brow, arrow-point tongue flicking out. It shimmers. When he tightens his pectorals, the tail twitches.

"Oh," he says. Scott, looking pleased, traces a thumb along the snout of the beast.

Then John notices on the left, below the wings, there are three little black boxes. Each box is coloured in, except for a letter in the middle. The BBC "bug", the logo watermarked on every show it airs. He turns to look at Scott, who bursts out laughing and ducks away. John catches him just in time, by the waist, pulls him back and kisses him and ruffles his hair.

"Do you like it?" Scott asks, when the kissing has settled them both down into peace, standing in the bedroom, nowhere to be, nobody to please but themselves.

"I love it," John declares. He steps away to look at it again, admiring the ripple of movement when he flexes. "I have to take a picture. Wait, you take it!" He dives for his mobile, sitting on the nightstand. He can _feel_ Scott's eyeroll even without looking, but when he thrusts the phone into his hand, Scott obligingly holds it up and snaps a picture. Then, sighing that he's created a monster, a second picture with John showing off his muscles.

"Okay gimme," John says, taking it from him and bestowing a grateful kiss. He has to email this to Carole _right now_ \-- ooh, and Gareth, who will laugh his ass off. And Gavin, who can send it along with his head shot...

By the time he's finished writing the emails and sending it to everyone who ought to see it, Scott has wandered back to his workroom. It's only when he hears a yelp of mortified surprise that John realises perhaps it wasn't all that wise to tweet that particular image. He goes back to look at it and sure enough, there he is, arms spread wide, giant red dragon all over him, erection prominently displayed as he shows off Scott's work.

"JOHN!" Scott yells.

"OH, LIKE IT'S THE FIRST TIME ANYONE'S SEEN THAT," John yells back. Scott hits the doorway, scowling, but there's a secret pleased light in his eyes.

"You're a maniac!" Scott accuses.

"You did it to me!" John accuses back.

"The internet's going to explode!"

"Whatever, let them," John says, and pulls Scott into a reluctant embrace. "Everyone on the internet knows that right now I'm about to get laid."

"Exhibitionist," Scott mutters, giving in.

"Why not?" John kisses his nose. "I'm a work of art. Is this stuff water-soluble?"

"Alcohol only. It'll wear off in a few days."

John grins. "Let's get sweaty."

"You are the least charming person I know," Scott tells him, but he ignores the beeps of a hundred incoming tweets, turns the phone off in John's hand, and lets himself be tugged along to bed.


End file.
